HOME



picture info

Sickle
A sickle, bagging hook, reaping-hook or grasshook is a single-handed agricultural tool designed with variously curved blades and typically used for harvesting or reaping grain crops, or cutting Succulent plant, succulent forage chiefly for feeding livestock. Falx was a synonym, but was later used to mean any of a number of tools that had a curved blade that was sharp on the inside edge. Since the beginning of the Iron Age hundreds of region-specific variants of the sickle have evolved, initially of iron and later steel. This great diversity of sickle types across many cultures can be divided into smooth or serrated blades, both of which can be used for cutting either green grass or mature cereals using slightly different techniques. The serrated blade that originated in prehistoric sickles still dominates in the reaping of grain and is even found in modern grain-harvesting machines and in some kitchen knives. History Pre-Neolithic The development of the sickle in Mesopota ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Frankleben Hoard
The Frankleben hoard is a significant hoard deposit of the European Bronze Age, associated with the Unstrut group (associated with the Tumulus or early Urnfield culture (ca. 1500–1250 BC). The site is in the Geisel valley, formed by a minor tributary of the Saale River. It was discovered in 1946 in a brown coal pit near Frankleben, now a part of Braunsbedra municipality, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. The hoard consists of three ceramic vessels, buried alongside one another. One of the vessels was destroyed by a coal dredger at the time of discovery. The finds consist of a total of about 45 kg of bronze artefacts, most of them sickles, alongside some axeheads. The discovery was made by the operator of the coal dredger, Anton Wesp, in the "Michael Vesta" pit (now flooded and part of ''Runstedter See'' south of Frankleben, just off the BAB 38 highway). Wesp's dredger destroyed the first vessel almost completely in June 1946 (find I). Wesp returned to the site on 5 July 1 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Urnfield Culture
The Urnfield culture () was a late Bronze Age Europe, Bronze Age culture of Central Europe, often divided into several local cultures within a broader Urnfield tradition. The name comes from the custom of cremation, cremating the dead and placing their ashes in urns, which were then buried in fields. The first usage of the name occurred in publications over grave sites in southern Germany in the late 19th century. Over much of Europe, the Urnfield culture followed the Tumulus culture and was succeeded by the Hallstatt culture. Some linguists and archaeologists have associated this culture with a Celtic languages, pre-Celtic language or Proto-Celtic language family.Peter Schrijver, 2016, "Sound Change, the Italo-Celtic Linguistic Unity, and the Italian Homeland of Celtic", in John T. Koch & Barry Cunniffe, ''Celtic From the West 3: Atlantic Europe in the Metal Ages: questions of shared language''. Oxford, England; Oxbow Books, pp. 9, 489–502. By the end of the 2nd millennium BC, ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Scythe
A scythe (, rhyming with ''writhe'') is an agriculture, agricultural hand-tool for mowing grass or Harvest, harvesting Crop, crops. It was historically used to cut down or reaping, reap edible grain, grains before they underwent the process of threshing. Horse-drawn and then tractor machinery largely replaced the scythe, but it is still used in some areas of Europe and Asia. Reapers are bladed machines that automate the cutting action of the scythe, and sometimes include subsequent steps in preparing the grain or the straw or hay. The word "scythe" derives from Old English ''siðe''. In Middle English and later, it was usually spelled ''sithe'' or ''sythe''. However, in the 15th century some writers began to use the ''sc-'' spelling as they thought (wrongly) that the word was related to the Latin (meaning "to cut"). Nevertheless, the ''sithe'' spelling lingered, and notably appears in Noah Webster's dictionaries. A scythe consists of a shaft about long called a ''snaith'', ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Falx
The was a weapon with a curved blade that was sharp on the inside edge used by the Thracians and Dacians. The name was later applied to a siege hook used by the Romans. Etymology is a Latin word originally meaning 'sickle' but was later used to mean any of a number of tools that had a curved blade that was sharp on the inside edge like a sickle. was thus also used to mean the weapon of the Thracians and Dacians, and the Roman siege hook. Dacian ''falx'' In Latin texts, the weapon was described as an ' (whence ) by Ovid in and as a ' by Satires of Juvenal, Juvenal in . The Dacian came in two sizes: one-handed and two-handed. The shorter variant was called (sickle) in the Dacian language (Valerius Maximus, III, 2.12) with a blade length that varied but was usually around long with a handle one-third longer than the blade. The two-handed was a polearm. It consisted of a wooden shaft with a long curved iron blade of nearly-equal length attached to the end. Archaeologic ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ritual Of Oak And Mistletoe
The ritual of oak and mistletoe is a Celtic religious ceremony, in which white-clad druids climbed a sacred oak, cut down the Viscum album, mistletoe growing on it, sacrificed two white bulls and used the mistletoe to make an elixir to cure infertility and the effects of poison.Pliny the Elder. ''Natural History (Pliny), Natural History'XVI, 95 The ritual, known from a single passage in Pliny the Elder, Pliny's ''Natural History (Pliny), Natural History'', has helped shape the image of the druid in the popular imagination.Brunaux (2006), p. 47. Account by Pliny the Elder The only extant source for this ritual is a passage in the ''Natural History (Pliny), Natural History'' by Ancient Rome, Roman historian Pliny the Elder, written in the 1st century AD. Speaking of mistletoe, he writes: While Pliny does not indicate the source on which he based this account, French archaeologist Jean-Louis Brunaux (:fr:Jean-Louis Brunaux, fr) has argued for Posidonius of Rhodes, a polymath who f ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period in Afro-Eurasia from a lifestyle of hunter-gatherer, hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and sedentism, settlement, making an increasingly large population possible. These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants, learning how they grew and developed. This new knowledge led to the domestication of plants into crops. Archaeological data indicate that the domestication of various types of plants and animals happened in separate locations worldwide, starting in the Geologic time scale, geological epoch of the Holocene 11,700 years ago, after the end of the last Ice Age. It was humankind's first historically verifiable transition to agriculture. The Neolithic Revolution greatly narrowed the diversity of foods available, resulting in a decrease in the quality of human nutrition compared ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Agricultural
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in the cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. In the 20th century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output. , small farms produce about one-third of the world's food, but large farms are prevalent. The largest 1% of farms in the world are greater than and operate more than 70% of the world's farmland. Nearly 40% of agricultural land is found on farms larger than . However, five of every six farms ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Tool
A tool is an Physical object, object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many Tool use by animals, animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates back hundreds of millennia, have been observed using tools to make other tools. Early human tools, made of such materials as Rock (geology), stone, bone, and wood, were used for the preparation of food, hunting, the manufacture of weapons, and the working of materials to produce clothing and useful Cultural artifact, artifacts and crafts such as pottery, along with the construction of housing, businesses, infrastructure, and transportation. The development of metalworking made additional types of tools possible. Harnessing energy sources, such as Working animal, animal power, wind, or steam, allowed increasingly complex tools to produce an even larger range of items, with the Industrial Revolution markin ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Harvest
Harvesting is the process of collecting plants, animals, or fish (as well as fungi) as food, especially the process of gathering mature crops, and "the harvest" also refers to the collected crops. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulses for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, or reaper. On smaller farms with minimal mechanization, harvesting is the most labor-intensive activity of the growing season. On large mechanized farms, harvesting uses farm machinery, such as the combine harvester. Automation has increased the efficiency of both the seeding and harvesting processes. Specialized harvesting equipment, using conveyor belts for gentle gripping and mass transport, replaces the manual task of removing each seedling by hand. The term "harvesting" in general usage may include immediate postharvest handling, including cleaning, sorting, packing, and cooling. The completion of harvesting marks the end of the growing season, or the growing cycle for a particular c ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Neolithic
The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of the world. This "Neolithic package" included the History of agriculture, introduction of farming, domestication of animals, and change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of sedentism, settlement. The term 'Neolithic' was coined by John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system. The Neolithic began about 12,000 years ago, when farming appeared in the Epipalaeolithic Near East and Mesopotamia, and later in other parts of the world. It lasted in the Near East until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) from about 6,500 years ago (4500 BCE), marked by the development ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Iron Age
The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progressing to protohistory (before written history). In this usage, it is preceded by the Stone Age (subdivided into the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic) and Bronze Age. These concepts originated for describing Iron Age Europe and the ancient Near East. In the archaeology of the Americas, a five-period system is conventionally used instead; indigenous cultures there did not develop an iron economy in the pre-Columbian era, though some did work copper and bronze. Indigenous metalworking arrived in Australia with European contact. Although meteoric iron has been used for millennia in many regions, the beginning of the Iron Age is defined locally around the world by archaeological convention when the production of Smelting, smelted iron (espe ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Bronze Age Europe
The European Bronze Age is characterized by bronze artifacts and the use of bronze implements. The regional Bronze Age succeeds the Neolithic Europe, Neolithic and Chalcolithic Europe, Copper Age and is followed by the Iron Age Europe, Iron Age. It starts with the Aegean Bronze Age in 3200 BC and spans the entire 2nd millennium BC (including the Únětice culture, Ottomány culture, British Bronze Age, Argaric culture, Nordic Bronze Age, Tumulus culture, Nuragic civilization, Nuragic culture, Terramare culture, Urnfield culture and Lusatian culture), lasting until c. 800 BC in central Europe. Arsenical bronze was produced in some areas from the 4th millennium BC onwards, prior to the introduction of tin bronze. Tin bronze foil had already been produced in southeastern Europe on a small scale in the Chalcolithic Europe, Chalcolithic era, with examples from Pločnik (archaeological site), Pločnik in Serbia dated to , as well as 14 other artefacts from Bulgaria and Serbia dated to b ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]